Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Catching Up

I haven't posted in a long time, but I have been reading.  No good reason to list what I've read, but I have been reading.

So, here's a question that I'm thinking of pursuing: what happens when we think of autonomy as a skill to be developed instead of a quality or characteristic that an individual has or doesn't have? 

Of course there's about a zillion books on autonomy and I don't have the time to read all of them.  However, the question of autonomy does come up in philosophy of education as the question of whether autonomy should be the goal of education.  I'm thinking that maybe I can interject something half way inteligible into that conversation.

I'm running into the problem I always do when I try to get into a conversation.  Namely, I am so behind in a conversation that is already on-going that I feel entirely ill-equipped to jump in and participate.  Of course, reading everything that's been written up to this point on a topic, while potentially necessary, is not going to be conducive to me actually getting anything written and into the conversation.  And while I'm perfectly happy to just read and learn, there's an expectation that I publish and some of my professional goals require that I meet this expectation.  But the question is always when have I read enough to be able to foray into the fray? 

All I know at the moment is, not yet.

No comments: